


Uncurling Lifelines

by swords (zombiejosette)



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiejosette/pseuds/swords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She keeps the ring, as well, and does not tell Alan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncurling Lifelines

She keeps his name, despite Alan's displeasure. Keeps it attached to hers, connected with a small black string of a hyphen. Edith humors Alan one time, and one time only: she leaves it off of her novels (“Credibility isn't worth much if your audience thinks you need to be put away.”), saving it only for the mundane and legalities. Her pen traces over the swoops and hills of the word, a careful, delicate exploration of every curve. A jolting stop at the end. Sudden. Pointed. _Sharpe_.

 

These are the ghosts which never go away.

 

She keeps the ring, as well, and does not tell Alan. Pried from Lucille's rigid hands, dried blood redder than the stone to prove it. She wears it on a chain beneath her chemise, silver cold and heavy and present against her chest. Finds her fingers reaching behind her neck to find the clasp. Toys with it. Breathes.

 

Remembers.

 

Forgets.

 

“Edith, you think too much.”

 

Alan sits, and Edith stands above hm, sun from his bay window casting their silhouettes onto the wall. A shadow play. Lifelike. Going through each and every motion with a deliberate precision.

 

Edith watches herself snatch her hand away from her neck and round on him.

 

“Doctor?”

 

She catches herself. He smiles, a subtle twitch of the corner of his mouth, so rare that Edith can't discount imagining it. He rises. Unsteady. He grips the edge of his desk for support. She fixes on his hands, eyes following the wiry tendons as e moves to his shelves. For a moment, she sees nothing but blood, dripping down from under his arm in between the bones of his fingers.

 

“And something tells me it isn't just your stories.”

 

Flustered, Edith straightens her spine. “I don't know what you mean.”

 

He moves through the shelves, finally producing two twigs, adorned with blue-violet buds. He explains, “Lavender. The witches advise it. For stress. Relaxation. Spirits, even.” (Edith swears there's a twinkle in his eyes, but she's been known to see things.) “ _Sleep_. I found it fitting.”

 

He holds the bunches out, and she accepts them with all the grace she can put in the palm of her hand. His eyes hold hers for a beat, but she catches them as they lower to the scar on he cheek. He's the only one who sees her.

 

“You keep surprising me, Dr. McMichael.”

 

“You continue to make believers of us all, Mrs. Sharpe.”

 

His grin is broad now, rivals the sun outside in its warmth, but Edith feels cold pinpricks of regret and something unidentifiable in her chest as she turns to leave him.

 

She keeps the sprigs of lavender by her pillow, all the same. (“If nothing else, they smell divine, Miss,” was Annie's approval). She tucks them between her mattress and headboard, letting the buds dust against her pillow. Alan could claim to believe all he wanted, but perhaps a healthy dose of skepticism had been thrown inside her, dusted on Lucille's knife as it sliced through her skin in the lift. Skepticism. Wariness. Caution.

 

Worry.

 

She heaves a heavy sigh and the the flowers rustle with her breath as she reaches over to extinguish the lamp next to her bed. For a moment, nothing but pitch dark. Then, slowly, the room turns silver as the light from the moon creeps under her curtains, spreads across the floor and spills across the bed. Edith follows the lines of moonlight on her sheets before she settles in bed, blankets pulled up to her neck, and turns to face the lavender. They stretch in the dark, thin, bare trees growing from behind her bed. Her mind, it wanders, as her hand does, twisting into the chain around her neck and pulling the ring from under her nightgown.

 

It happens so quickly – he isn't there, and suddenly he is – that Edith begins to question how tired she actually is, how dry her eyes are, how prominent and sunken the dark circles have become.

 

Her mother is different. Her mother she can hear down the halls, her mother scrapes along the floorboards, against her door, makes it creak on its hinges before grabbing hold.

 

Thomas is different. She wonders if he's a cast of the moonlight so pale, so tall and thin, so quiet as he hovers.

 

The coldness in her heart subsides and grips hold of the muscle again all at once, and she reaches toward him, a breath of “Thomas” in her throat, but nothing comes forth, as though her mouth is stuffed with cotton.

 

He reaches toward her, and Edith's hand shakes as she matches his movements, but his hand moves through her, to her face, down her neck, the vapor of his fingertips tracing the slope and touching their way down her chest (this is where her breath catches, her heart speeds from staccato), all the way down, down, down, until he finds the ring.

 

He holds there, his fingertips pale and white against the glimmer of the ruby.

 

Edith raises her gaze, meets his sullen eyes until the moonlight moves from her window and he fades along with it.

 

Her throat clears ands he hisses, “No,” and snatches at the empty air until she collapses onto her pillows, ring thumping against the mattress, lavender gathered in her fists.

 

In the morning, it sits in the wastebasket, and Edith does not write this down.

 

 

 


End file.
